I was interested to see how Zenwalk differs from Slackware, and after reading on their web site that version 2.01 is ‘the biggest jump in Zenwalk evolution since the beginning of the project’, I wanted to see how far Zenwalk has come since it was reviewed here as MiniSlack.
Zenwalk Linux is single-CD distribution that promises to deliver a lightweight ‘rational’ desktop with the legendary simplicity and stability of its parent distribution, Slackware.
That single 470 megabyte download gets you one desktop environment and one application of each type. The developers chose to go with what probably has to be called the distant-third open source desktop environment, XFCE, but for applications they stuck with the heavyweights: Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Xine, GIMP, etc.
All this runs atop kernel 2.6.14.2, with the Reiser File System 4 as the default. They have also added their own Gnome libraries, start-up scripts and netpkg, an online addition to the venerable Slackware suite of package tools.
Before we begin the review proper, the formalities: I’m a confirmed Slacker with about three years experience using Linux. I’m also something of a distribution junkie. I was interested to see how Zenwalk differs from Slackware, and after reading on their web site that version 2.01 is ‘the biggest jump in Zenwalk evolution since the beginning of the project’, I wanted to see how far Zenwalk has come since it was reviewed here as MiniSlack.
I installed Zenwalk on my desktop machine, a home-built Biostar small form factor featuring a motherboard based on the VIA KM400 & VT8237 chipset, an Athlon XP 2800, a gigabyte of RAM, an nVidia FX 5200 video card and my distribution-junkie-enabling spare 80 gigabyte SATA hard drive.
Anyone who has installed Slackware will find Zenwalk’s installation program familiar, if more brightly colored. It uses ncurses and is essentially a series of questions and opportunities to make choices. It expects you to know your hardware and what you want to do with it, but it also has very good defaults that might not give you an optimal installation, but will almost certainly result in a working system for most people running standard x86 hardware. The entire Zenwalk procedure is well documented with screenshots here.
You can measure the distance the developers have gone from straight Slackware by looking at the choices they’ve made. Right from the beginning it’s obvious they’re serious about zeroing in on desktop users. This begins with the number of kernels Zenwalk offers. Instead of the many you find on a Slackware CD, Zenwalk offers two. This seems logical, because most desktop users are going to be using fairly standard x86 desktop machines, and are unlikely to be screaming for exotic file systems or support for some high-end server hardware.
The next sign is that the package selection process has been dropped from the installation process. According to the Zenwalk web site their users asked for this change. Essentially, the developers have done the package selection for you. Aside from that, the first part of the installer is pretty much 100 percent Slackware.
When that process ends and you reboot, however, we see the developers have added a few steps clearly designed to help desktop users. These include screens devoted to choosing a video driver, preferred login mode, a step to set up your sound card and another to walk you through adding a non-root user to your system. These are tasks virtually all desktop Slackware users (which is, of course, only a subset of all Slackware users) have to accomplish, so including them in the installation routine of a desktop-focused distribution seems a good choice.
A word of warning to those not familiar with the Slackware installer: there’s no neat graphical way to shrink a Windows partition, and the installer requires users without a prepared disk to partition their disks using fdisk or cfdisk. This is relatively easy for those with a little Linux experience, but it might be a show-stopper for newbies.
After a second reboot you’re presented with your login of choice. I stuck with text and started XFCE using the startx command. XFCE may be less well-known than KDE or Gnome, but it dovetails nicely with Zenwalk’s stated aims by offering all the basic desktop niceties without unnecessary bloat.
KDE is available via netpkg download, however, and plenty of other desktop environments are available using Zenwalk’s netpkg utility, the Slackware web site or from linuxpackages.net. I chose not to burn up Zenwalk’s bandwidth just to test out its version of KDE, but I did want to try adding something not already installed from the CD. I chose to add on Fluxbox, the window manager I spend at least half my time using.
I wanted to see how Zenwalk handled packages from other repositories, so I downloaded Fluxbox from the Slackware site. The package installed without incident, and the system added Fluxbox as a choice alongside XFCE. When I tried to log in to Fluxbox, however, the system complained of a missing library. This was cured by another visit to Slackware. Upon further investigation, I found both packages were available from Zenwalk, and sticking to netpkg may have saved me some trouble and Slackware some bandwidth.
Still, I was at first a bit put off that Zenwalk’s base install didn’t support something as simple as Fluxbox. After some thought, however, I found it to be not a bug, as they say, but a feature. It shows Zenwalk doesn’t include anything that isn’t needed. So, while it may send you searching for a library to run something you want, it probably doesn’t have dozens or scores of other libraries lying about waiting to support some window manager or program you didn’t install and don’t need.
I did use netpkg to install a few programs, including the indispensable Rox-Filer. Everything went smoothly. Netpkg is a nice addition to the simple Slackware package management offerings. I started it from the command line and it brought up a graphical front end reminiscent of Vector Linux’s VASM. It’s not as all-encompassing as Synaptic or YAST2, but it is a simple and functional way to download and install packages, which is in keeping with the distribution’s stated goal.
I used Zenwalk for a couple of days, and its most prominent feature in day-to-day use is speed. Subjectively speaking, it’s noticeably faster than a stock Slackware installation, which I’ve found to be the fastest major binary distribution. This is probably owing to not only its choice of lightweight programs, but using the latest 2.6 kernel and version 4 of the Reiser file system, which is said to be much faster than previous versions.
Another nice feature is the work the developers have done to configure the system. It’s nice looking without reminding you of wet Christmas candy, and logical configuration choices have been made without setting the system up to reflect any one person’s idiosyncracies.
Beyond that, Zenwalk operates like any good Linux installation. I saw no evidence of instability, and things such as Firefox extensions all worked as well as on Slackware or Ubuntu. It does only offer one option for each type of program (except text editors), but they’ve chosen well. You could argue that lighter weight programs might have been more appropriate in a few cases, especially if you’re hoping to use that extra speed to eke another year of use out of older hardware. Zenwalk does make programs such as Abiword available via netpkg, so those options are still there.
Which brings up the other Zenwalk offering, which I didn’t test but feel I must mention. Zenwalk Core is a 230 megabyte iso with no graphical (X) programs. The idea is to use it as a base for building your own dream system; everything you want and nothing more. It would be easy to come up with a killer lightweight system using packages from the variety of sources out there.
My final verdict is that Zenwalk is tight: tighty optimized, tightly controlled and tightly targeted. If you’ve got a little Linux experience and you’re ready to move from a more fully featured, and thus slower, distribution, or if you’re tired of having 10 window managers and the whole LAMP (Linux, Apache, mySQL and Perl, PHP or Python) stack eating up space on your hard drive, Zenwalk is an excellent choice.
One question springs to mind however: whither Zenwalk? The distribution seems to be heading straight to where Vector already is: Slackware with just enough add-ons to make life easier. Zenwalk is more focused at this point, but will it remain so, or will it succumb to feature creep and balloon up from a 470 megabyte .iso to something you can just squeeze onto a 700 gigabyte disk? Or two?
The final question I guess I should answer is this: would I replace my Slackware installation with Zenwalk? Not today. I’ve got Dropline GNOME on top of Slackware-current, and it’s running smooth and pretty. When Slackware 11 (or 10.3) comes out, however, it’s a decision I will have to review. Desktop Linux changes every day, and I think it pays to review your choice of distribution regularly. As for Zenwalk, it offers too many enhancements – 2.6 kernel standard, Reiser FS 4, netpkg – for desktop Slackers to ignore.
–Joseph Ferrare
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
The Zenwalk logo bares a striking resemblence to the MySQL logo…
The Zenwalk logo bares a striking resemblence to the MySQL logo…
Oh dear! Stop the presses! Call the cops!
😉
Would you be just as smart ass if it was your logo that it resembled?
Well, unless it’s your logo, I’d suggest you stop being so pedantic and focus on the topic. Zenwalk has been around for awhile, if anyone had any concerns, I think it would have been an issue by now. Tool.
I’ve checked out Zenwalk before…it’s a bit too “daring” for what I would employ Slackware for.
http://www.mysql.com/common/logos/mysql_100x52-64.gif
http://www.slackplanet.org/logo.png
The only similarity is a dolphin…
With all this talk of fluxbox, KDE, gnome, XFCE, etc… Does anyone still use something as simple as fvwm any more? I found it funny that the reviewer referred to fluxbox as simple 🙂
Adam
I guess I’ve been showing Linux to Windows users too much lately. I was aiming for center of mass (as they say in the Army). Most people I show Linux to consider KDE normal, Gnome simple and Fluxbox geeky. A bare OpenBox scares them.
Thanks for commenting.
Why run X at all?
:o)
Concur: the answer is emacs. Please repeat the question.
Whoa…that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms right there my friend.
What’s the best Slack distro for someone coming off of Suse who watches DVDs and does a little gaming?
It’s very hard to say. Slackware is a great distro in it’s own right, and a good place to start. Vector offers several versions (SOHO, Standard, Download…). Zenwalk is, as I noted in the review, very focused and fast (Vector is also very fast). Plus there are some I haven’t tried (Frugalware, etc.).
If you really like your gui tools and a single repository to download from automatically, I’d check out Vector or Zenwalk. If you don’t mind being a bit more independent, Slackware is probably the best place to start. Everything works, it’s fast and has a lot of options. The package management is very simple, but you can add on Swaret, Slackpkg or Slaptget. Also, I’ve never had anything fail to install on Slackware. Everything seems to be where the upstream developers intended it to be. Linuxpackages.net is great, too.
I really want to like Suse, just as I really want to like Ubuntu, but both seem slow to me, and Suse seems to put things in odd places.
Anyway, have fun.
I know how bout callin it Dolphix or Flippernix.Lust kidding. Im not sure I understand the significance of the Dolphin in zenwalk but really who cares…the logo is no reflection on the OS’s worth.
-nX
Praise Slack. send in your 30 bucks, Bob demands it!
I used zenwalk 2.01 for a month and I get forced to go back to slackware because there are many bugs in zenwalk.
For example:
My dvd writer just don’t works on zenwalk. I used netpkg to update the system and after this rox stoped to work. There are other problems I don’t remember now.
I think zenwalk is a very interesting project but still in the alpha stage.
Interesting. The distro claims stability in the vein of Slackware, but uses Reiser4 – which (not to flame of course, I’m looking foward to Reiser4 being merged) isn’t even in the main kernel yet. And I believe Slackware still ships with a 2.4 kernel, yet Zenwalk has a 2.6.11 kernel
Looks really good however. Netpkg sounds really neat.
Reiser4 has been around for eons. I really don’t know the politics involved, but it appears to be suffering from a lack of support from kernel devs to include it in the stock kernel. I believe a lot of it is historical and has much to do with Hans not complying with coding guidelines. The functionality of the filesystem itself, however, is rock stable from what I’ve witnessed (no corruptions or slowdown yet).
I too am a distro junkie, and once had an 80 GB hard drive with a bunch of windows and linux distros on it all booted via a System Commander menu. Then the 80 GB hard drive ground to a halt. Unhappy about that, I did start over, better than ever with a total of 320 GB of hard drive space. I did get into the world of livecd linux distros, however. Was charmed by the thought that they run off the CD, and are not really installed. One’s personal configuration and persistent home directory can be installed on a hard drive, but can also be stored on a USB memory stick. I recommend the hard drive, and also you need a big swap partition on that also that all of the livecd linux, and installed linux installations can use.
–Rapidweather–
http://www.geocities.com/rapidweather/getting_started.htm l
You can install a 2.6 kernel with Slackware 10.2 (or current). It’s called test26. It’s what I installed on my desktop and ran until I got a good compile of 2.6.14.3. Of course, it being a Slackware kernel, it’s plain vanilla, and Zenwalk’s isn’t.
I understand there is (or was) a lot of back and forth about reiserfs4. It apparently has something to do with which fs bits should go in the kernel and which shouldn’t (too deep for me).
I’m actually running Zenwalk on my centrino laptop now, and it’s working fine for me. Haven’t updated anything yet, and I probably won’t soon. but it is the first distro outside of Ubuntu that has everything working.
Thanks for reading my article.
joe f.
I like zenwalk. Used reiser4 , Did the slackware thing and hunted down all kind of depencies for things like Mplayer. Use Azurues, MSN,Realsoft3D, Blender etc . If I’m running Linux i like to use the latest and greatest as simply as possible. Which means I’m waiting on Archlinux 7.X Berry linux was very good although some custom work was necessary and didn’t get yum working. As I’ve been mainly debian based except for Arch.
You can download noodle right now – the install iso says -pre, but it’s solid as a rock and sidesteps the devfs and initrd migrations.
Two or three years ago there was a lot of talk about Linux forking and losing market penetration as a result. While it may not have forked, the myriad distributions may create a perception that the choice is too hard and that standards vary. Perhaps we need three or four top-class, polished, professional-standard Linux distros, rather than hundreds of “me-too” attempts.
How many people are gonna keep saying this? Listen, the diversity inherent with a standard base (*nix, or Linux in particular) and modular components is a GOOD THING. It has done nothing to slow the adoption rate of Linux distros and has, in fact, encouraged use in areas such as embedded computing, clusters, supercomputing, desktop and server computing. The same old people have been singing this same tune for years and guess what? Adoption hasn’t slowed, it’s accellerated. The “Linux community” hasn’t fractured into 10,000 pieces. Anybody who thinks such a thing could happen has a painfully tenuous grasp of how FOSS works.
I’m with monodeldiablo on this one. I talk up Linux every chance I get, and to the vast majority of Windows users there is only one Linux. No, it’s not Red Hat. It’s just Linux. First you have to get them over the hump of wanting to try anything different, and most of them will look longingly at the greener grass, but never move one little toe toward it.
It’s only the ones who start looking into actually trying it who realize there are actually multiple distros. I’ve never had one tell me they backed off because there were too many choices. Usually, they have somebody pulling them along (or they seek somebody out, in the classic two-step flow of communication) and that person recommends a distro. The rest do as they do in everything else: choose the popular (and therefore same-seeming) option. So they end up with Suse or Mandrake out of Borders or Barnes and Nobles, or Ubuntu or Mepis off the internet. Either way: score!
Later on, as they get further into the FOSS thing, they might switch around, but the couple people I’ve gotten to use Linux here (it’s a small American community in Germany) have stuck with what I gave them as surely as they had stuck with Windows.
Of course, it could be that I’d hate to lose the opportunity to try out a new distro every time I get my machines running sweetly and get bored. Nah.
See ya,
joe f.
Hi,
I think that the diversity is in fact, the reason why the Linux market is so strong against proprietary OS vendors :
– It would be possible for Microsoft to fight against 4 Linux distributions, but it’s a bit more difficult to compete against the 30 main Linux projects.
– About the number of Linux distributions beeing a problem for inovation : IMHO it’s benefic : more project = more ideas, which are shared in the GPL way of life
For example : Zenwalk includes the “Discover” hardware detection system from the Debian project.
– One more point in favor of diversity is that , as time goes, only the best projects/ideas are kept by the users: it’s a kind of Darwinism mode of evolution, and I believe it’s the right way to select the best technologies : let the users decide !
Zenwalk is a “rational” Linux system, helped in this goal by the fact that Slackware Linux is itself very simple and rational. Zenwalk conforms to standards (Unixology!), that’s the reason why it’s stable, clean and fast. Slackware and Zenwalk are friends projects, like Debian/Ubuntu : Zenwalk started from a solid Slack base and added improvements in many domains : admin tools (see userconfig, networkconfig, netpkg), kernel, filesystems, apps selection, desktop tunning, system tunning (hardware/video detection…). And for those who takes care : artwork
About XFCE : I really believe that it has an advantage over Gnome : it’s designed from the start as a Desktop environment (like KDE), when Gnome is a mix of several small projects. I’m not writing about speed , everybody knows that XFCE is fast, and features are now really near to Gnome’s
Cheers
JP
“I think that the diversity is in fact, the reason why the Linux market is so strong against proprietary OS vendors”
Do you really believe Linux is SO strong on the desktop market against Windows?
I think all these many distributions do not bring anything new. They are variants of another distribution . They fix some problem and bring some new problems. The worst part is that there is no way to know if a particular distribution will work well on your specific computer until you try it.
For commercial software support of Linux on the Desktop, these is a nightmare. A commercial software would have to test its product against all these distributions. Needless to say, that does not happen: complex commercial software generally support a very restricted numbers of distributions and in many case, just one or two.
I think instead of creating another new distribution, it would be more productive to support a single distribution that would work everywhere. Granted, that is not as fun for unpaid developpers!
“”Do you really believe Linux is SO strong on the desktop market against Windows? “”
You are right about this, but that’s just why I didn’t wrote “Desktop market” , just “market”.
Linux desktop apps, and specially office apps are still not mature enough to compete. This has nothing to do with Commercial softwares not ported on Linux. The only commercial office software that matters is MS Office, and I don’t think that the fact that it’s not ported on Linux is related to diversity of platforms.
Diversity is in technology like in sociology or ecology, a very good thing, as well as not always beeing the simplest thing to deal with … globalisation is more confortable
It is very nice to see a new linux distribution everyday. But is it better for consumer and liux lover that every developer from every linux distribution get together and developed only one linux version.?
I have my reasons.
1. Linux has a limited resource in term of developer. If every developer get together, we could make a better linux operating system that we have now. This way will win consumer to use more linux.
2.It is nice to compete with others linux distribution. But is it nicer to jon together and compete with microsoft and apple.
3.Every linux distribution has a advantage and shortadvantage. If get together, we can have all good thing in one place.
I am not a developer or programming. I love linux because it is stable, reliable and flexible.
That’s my opinion.
linuxfan
I find it a bit weird that they chose XFCE though. I’m all for distros making the choice for the user and not including every possible flavor of every possible software, but sticking to mainstream (e.g. either Gnome or KDE) is a better way to go. XFCE has some annoying usability issues, such as not making use of Fitt’s corners. Clicking in a corner of the screen doesn’t do anything in XFCE.
Of course, I need to test the distro anyway.
Wow, that was the most complicated installer I’ve seen since Gentoo (which, admittedtly, doesn’t even have an installer). So many questions that shouldn’t even be necessary to ask.
I wasn’t too happy that it wanted to use Lilo instead of Grub, which means I wouldn’t be able to recover manually if things went wrong, since I don’t know how to operate Lilo. And things did went wrong.
It detected and added Windows XP, but completely ignored my Ubuntu install at another partition. Way to go, now I have no idea how to boot up Ubuntu without installing it on another partition and let it detect the other installation that way..
Oh, and it correctly guessed I had an Intel integrated graphics card and suggested the Vesa graphics driver. Well, I have no knowledge of which driver is appropriate and chose to trust Zenwalk’s choice here. However, now the graphical login doesn’t even start, which renders the OS completely useless to me.
I guess I’ll have to wait for a newer release.
I have met the intel graphic problem too, the method to solve it is, edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf, at the section “device”, note the driver is i810, but zenwalk script write it into the next line, just backspace it to the “driver” line can fix this problem. I hope this may help you.
I tried it but to my surprise, not even nano was installed, which forced me to use vi* which I have no idea how to control. :- Also, during the installation I chose to use a different screen font using 50 lines, but somehow that wasn’t used when switching virtual terminal, which made half of the text not visible on screen, making the latest command not visible!
To top that, there’s no /etc/init.d/* scripts to turn off GDM or whaveter graphical boot program they’re using (I thought /etc/init.d scripts were more or less a Linux standard, having seen it in just about every other distro I’ve tested), so I had to kill the x client repeatedly in order to get 2 new minutes of editing. I tried the obvious “killall -9 gdm”, “… xdm”, “… kdm”, but none were running.
No, this distro is definitely not for me.
Edited 2005-12-30 13:01
there’s no /etc/init.d/* scripts to turn off GDM or whaveter graphical boot program they’re using (I thought /etc/init.d scripts were more or less a Linux standard, having seen it in just about every other distro I’ve tested), so I had to kill the x client repeatedly in order to get 2 new minutes of editing. I tried the obvious “killall -9 gdm”, “… xdm”, “… kdm”, but none were running.
“pstree” is a good tool for viewing the currently active services. Since Zenwalk is based on Slackware, it might be worth reading the Slackware documentation to find out more about Zenwalk’s init system.
http://www.slackbook.org/html/system-configuration.html#SYSTEM-CONF…
http://www.slackbook.org/html/security.html#AEN5102
I haven’t yet tried Zenwalk but there’s another Slackware derivative that I can recommend: Frugalware. Frugalware shares Slackware’s ideal of simplicity but it’s more desktop-oriented (KDE, GNOME, XFCE …). Frugalware uses scripts written by Patrick Volkerding and it has better localization support than Slackware. Frugalware uses the pacman package manager from Arch Linux and it has added a GUI frontend to pacman. Frugalware packages are usually very up-to-date and they are i686 optimized.
And, yes, Frugalware has nano. 🙂
Fitt is possibly the most overrated individual in UI design ever. I’m completely sick of hearing his name invoked.
I’d advice you to forget about the individual and just acknowledge the fact that the corners of the screen is the easiest locations to click on.
No, the easiest location to click on is where the mouse already is, not some screen corner far away.
XFCE makes good use of Fitts’s law because you can right click anywhere on the desktop to get the menu, instead of having to move it all the way to the corner.
I use zenwalk1.3 in my power plant historian product, as the OS.
It is very fast and stable. The best thing for developers, every tool and library like gcc and GTK+ is ready. if I use Ubuntu, I have to grab them one by one.
Please take a look at zenwalk and my gas turbine historian at
http://www.leiosoft.com/products.htm
I think all this discussion on “too many Linux distros” is quite pointless. As long as people are allowed to create their distributions, they will keep creating them and nothing can be done to stop them. Well, actually it might be possible to stop them – for example, by making it illegal to create a new distro – but this will almost certainly kill Linux.
Just downloaded and installed – total time 3 hours, typing Zenwalk !
As a slack user (when I get the chance), I found it a pleasure to install – the only small flaw was forgetting to disable cardbus, which for some reason locks up the system on my acer travelmate 4101LMi
Aside from that, flawless installation and everything so far works – just need to check to see if I can configure the wireless card and I’m good to go.
Thanks for the heads up.
Not sure about XFCE tho, will give it a try for a while, but I prefer KDE.
I am really disappointed in this review. From reading it the reader is left with the feeling that Zenwalk walk is nothing more than a “Wanna-be Vector Linux with a more brightly colored Slackware installer”. There are many positive notes there but there are as many or more negative ones. The articles comments compare to slapping someone in the face, saying you’re sorry and then following it up with yet another slap.
Zenwalk is an amazing distro. Much hard work, thought and effort is put into it. That hard work and thought is clearly visible to anyone that takes the time to open there eyes.
In his own words the author stated that he wanted to see how it compares to Slackware. Zenwalk while in fact was originally based on Slackware is not and will never be Slackware. It is much improved on. Numerous tools have been added to make using the system more enjoyable without sacrificing control. To list all of the improvements, tools and usable features this distro combines into a distro would make this comment a small non-fiction book.
It may not be for everyone but to each his own. Personally, I much prefer Zenwalk than anything else. So much so that it has replaced every distro on all seven of my machines.
Bottom line… Zenwalk is more than a Slackware clone or a Vector wannabe. It is a worthy and noble distro in its own right.
“To list all of the improvements, tools and usable features this distro combines into a distro would make this comment a small non-fiction book.”
Go ahead and list at least 20 of them. I won’t mind.
Yep, I tried it out and you could say that it is an improvement. That is if “doesn’t work” is an improvement.
It took three trys to get it to boot after the install.
Back with Slack now. Life is good.
Sorry to hear you’re disappointed, but I laid it out as I saw it. I made it pretty clear where I was coming from, as well as how things went. I summed it up by saying the distro was tight, which, for my generation, was high praise.
Since I wrote the review I replaced my Ubuntu installation on my centrino-based laptop with Zenwalk. It’s much nicer, actually, because it is so tight and tightly focused. With speedstep on I’m running at 600 Mhz most of the time, and I can really feel the difference. Of course, it took more work.
I think the comments show it’s a mixed bag, which is waht you can say about pretty much every distro.
Thanks for the feedback.
I’m glad I saw this article. I’m giving this Zenwalk a spin right now. I’m impressed. I’m known as the Slackware guy in my circles. I think they’ve got something here. This is a great litle distro. I may hang on to it a while.
Quoted from Anonymous:
“It took three trys to get it to boot after the install. Back with Slack now. Life is good”
Hey guy, if you can’t install Zenwalk, in less than four tries, you probably can’t install butter on bread and have no business fooling around with a computer no less.
My 2 cents
I have reinstalled SLackware on my computer added Kernel-2.6.13.1 and patched it to use Win4Lin compiled a new Kernel installed Win4lin and win98se.
All without a hitch.
Although I have never ‘installed’ butter on bread I do believe I can fool around with computers.
It could have been a bad read of a file from the cdrom or it could have been a compatabiility problem. Don’t know. Don’t care.
I was not impressed with Zenwalk even after the install went through.
If you are not pleased with Slack then you are probably not doing it right or need a few new circles. :>)
hehe
This posts hilarious!!!
Hey I’m knocking Slackware in anyway, Da Man is still Da Man.
The butter things was meant as a joke btw.
Smile
I just mean Zenwalk looks really promising. It has a Slackware based package management system with optional automatic dependency checking and installation.
Did you notice that, yes, I said dependency checking and resolution. All from one repository, not from linuxpackages.net stuff built from God only knows what clown.
I love Slackware and always will. The guy who created Zenwalk does too. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all.
I kinda agree with AxXium.
I too am opposed to someone installing an OS for two days or two minutes and thinking that they know everything about it.
Does that make them qualified to publish a review on it? I don’t think so.
maybe slackware should aquire netpkg. it seems to do a really good job. I installed this and I would describe it as installing slackware + optional tweaks I usually do. What it reminds me of is archlinux. This is trully slackware + pacman, but its called netpkg. It has less options, like no removing [that i know of], but you got pkgtool, which is really good.
I usually install the 2.6.13 kernel [test26] and from there I install the modules and such.
Zenwalk does all the steps for you that are usually done [by me] + one more. I wish Slackware would only install the programs you need then add x11 and fluxbox afterwards.
I am excited for this as well:
Quote:
But I plan to release another branch more optimized for servers : Zenwalk Lamp :
– smaller
– with non-preemptive kernel
– with essential LAMP features (Apache, Mysql, PHP)
Can’t wait, guys there are doing a GREAT!!! Job.
“This is trully slackware + pacman, but its called netpkg. It has less options, like no removing [that i know of], but you got pkgtool”
NETpkg = Network Package Manager != Pacman
Netpkg also has more options in its field, do “man netpkg”
“Zenwalk does all the steps for you that are usually done [by me] + one more.”
You shouldn’t compare 1 year of development/improvements done by several people, with post-installation tunnings. This is not fair for Zenwalk developpers
Zenwalk is now as far from Slackware as Ubuntu is from Debian.
JP
well I didn’t really mean this to discredit the developers. It’s just that Zenwalk is at the stage where I wish Slackware was on the desktop. Zenwalk meets my needs perfectly. It does what I do on slackware afterward/before and even things I wish I could do.
Also, netpkg reminds me of pacman. And I did read man netpkg and know there are more options than “netpkg foo”
I like the way netpkg is simple and meets all dependancies.
I have tried a LOT of linux distros…maybe a dozen
over the last 3 years….These days I only
have a PII 333Mhz computer as a desktop so I am
interested in the fastest desktop linux can give me
I was down to Vector and Slackware..with vector beating out slack 10.1
After trying Slackware 10.2 I have chosen to ditch my Vector partion and unless there is a REAL good reason
I won’t be trying any more linux distros except for fun.
Here’ why
(0) Slackware 10.2 is as fast as Vector(the dynamite version for speed was installed) and is noticably faster than 10.1 . Even Gnome(installed via Freerock gnome) is quick and resposive!
(1) Vector and all “simplified” distros always leave
something out and I don’t mean just on the server side . For vector it was the lack of CJK display
(Chinese Japanese Korean fonts) that is in 10.2 by default. It is NOT trivial to download and properly install fonts in linux.
(2) Once you have learned the basics of unix (yes this includes the vi editor) any linux install is not that hard . I think partioning may be the most difficult concept for the newbie.
(3) Package management is all fine and well and
if slackware had NetBSD install that would be great.
But..I can live without it. Believe it or not
klik(a debian installer) will work on slackware
as long as you have a loopback enabled kernel.
(4) I like to play with my OS ..while I haven’t done
much server work I hope to learn..
So for educational purposes it’s best to work with
a full system.
(5) for really old hardware like a 486 there are at least 2 distros: puppy and peanut that are designed for this and have some cool ideas..nonstandard apps..
In conclusion I am not saying its bad BUT what we need to see are some DETAILED benchmarks of Zenwalk vs Slackware(10.2) and maybe puppy thrown in..
Maybe the article just isn;t convincing enough..